Monday’s Mini-Report, 4.22.19

* Sri Lanka: “At least 290 people were killed and 500 others injured after a series of blasts shook Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday. A wave of near-simultaneous explosions rocked three churches and three luxury hotels, officials said. Police later reported two further explosions. Police said Monday that 24 suspects had been arrested.”

* The results weren’t close: “Comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy won Sunday’s runoff election in Ukraine, ousting incumbent President Petro Poroshenko in a landslide. With over 90 percent of the ballots counted, Zelenskiy had 73 percent of the vote with Poroshenko at just under 25 percent.”

* At the border: “The FBI on Saturday arrested a man described as a commander of an armed group that has been detaining migrants in New Mexico, the state attorney general’s office said.”

* The end of a strike: “Stop & Shop and its striking workers reached a tentative agreement Sunday night, bringing an end to a 10-day work stoppage that crippled New England’s largest grocery chain – closing dozens of stores, delaying food from reaching others, and keeping away loyal shoppers in large numbers.”

* This seems unlikely to go well: “The Trump administration said Monday it will scrap all waivers that allowed eight governments to buy Iranian oil without facing U.S. sanctions – a move designed to choke off Tehran’s oil revenue.”

* Kansas: “Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s power to fill vacancies in some top state posts would be stripped and given to party leadership under new legislation introduced in the House.”

* He’s off to a great start, isn’t he? “Interior Secretary David Bernhardt began working on policies that would aid one of his former lobbying clients within weeks of joining the Trump administration, according to a POLITICO analysis of agency documents – a revelation that adds to the ethics questions dogging his leadership of the agency.”

* The administration sure does lose a lot in court: “A federal judge late Friday delivered a significant setback to the Trump administration’s policy of promoting coal, ruling that the Interior Department acted illegally when it sought to lift an Obama-era moratorium on coal mining on public lands.”

* An unexpected new policy: “President Trump on Friday abruptly reversed American policy toward Libya, issuing a statement publicly endorsing an aspiring strongman in his battle to depose the United Nations-backed government.”

* Will the facts matter? “The special counsel’s report confirmed this week that Seth Rich, a young Democratic National Committee employee whose unsolved killing became grist for a right-wing conspiracy theory, was not the source of thousands of internal D.N.C. emails that WikiLeaks released during the 2016 presidential race, officially debunking a notion that had persisted without support for years.”

* Matt Shea is back in the news: “A controversial Washington state Republican participated in discussions about spying on and engaging in physical violence against anti-fascist activists, private chats published by the Guardian Saturday reveal.”